Collaborative optimization of acquisition selection and service pricing for inland-river ports based on repeated games

Abstract

Two key issues are confronted by the Port Group when entering an inland-river market; namely, port acquisition selection at the strategic level and port service pricing at the operational level. This article identifies the multi-type game relationships among the Port Group and multiple ports and customers in the planning time-horizon, and proposes a three-level programming model based on repeated games for the inland-river port acquisition selection and service pricing collaborative optimization problem. According to the model characteristics, a three-level nested heuristic algorithm is developed by combining a genetic algorithm, game simulation algorithm and equilibrium allocation algorithm. A series of numerical experiments with partial real data in Jining City, Shandong Province, China, is conducted to validate the superiority and efficiency of the proposed model and method. This article also provides some valuable management suggestions for the inland-river Port Group in terms of investment scale, investment expectation, pricing mode and customer relationship.

KEYWORDS:

• Inland-river ports
• acquisition selection
• service pricing
• repeated games
• nested heuristic algorithm

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Data availability statement

All data generated or analysed during this study are included in this article.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [grant numbers 71890972/71890970 and 72288101].